LostChurn Docs

Guided onboarding experience with CRO features — first recovery celebration, trial countdown, webhook health, configuration simulation, and sandbox-to-paid conversion.

LostChurn's onboarding experience is designed to get you recovering revenue as quickly as possible. Every step is optimized for conversion and time-to-value, from the first webhook to your first recovered payment.

Onboarding Checklist

When you first sign up, the dashboard displays a guided checklist that walks you through each setup step. The checklist tracks your progress and highlights the next action.

Checklist Steps

Step	Description	Required
Connect payment processor	Link Stripe, Braintree, or another PSP via OAuth or API key	Yes
Verify webhook delivery	Confirm that payment failure events are arriving	Yes
Configure email domain	Set up a custom sender domain for recovery emails (CNAME delegation via Resend)	Yes
Create first campaign	Set up a recovery campaign with email templates	Yes
Invite team members	Add colleagues with role-based access	No
Enable SMS channel	Add Twilio credentials for SMS dunning	No
Review recovery settings	Confirm retry timing, max attempts, and decline code routing	No

Email Domain Gate

The email domain configuration step is a required gate in the onboarding checklist. Recovery emails cannot be sent until you have verified a custom sender domain. This ensures deliverability and protects your sender reputation from day one.

Two setup paths are available:

Automatic (recommended): LostChurn provisions a subdomain like recover.yourdomain.com and provides three CNAME records to add to your DNS.
Custom: You specify an existing subdomain and configure the CNAME records manually.

DNS propagation typically takes 5-30 minutes. The checklist updates automatically once verification succeeds.

If you are evaluating LostChurn before committing to DNS changes, use Sandbox Mode to explore the full feature set with simulated data.

First Recovery Celebration

When LostChurn recovers its first payment for your account, a celebration modal appears in the dashboard. This is triggered by the first PaymentRecovered event associated with your merchant.

The modal displays:

The recovered amount and customer name
A confirmation that your recovery pipeline is fully operational
A prompt to share the milestone or continue to the analytics dashboard

This celebration reinforces the value of LostChurn at the earliest possible moment and increases activation confidence.

During your free trial, a persistent banner at the top of the dashboard shows the number of days remaining. The banner is color-coded to indicate urgency:

Days Remaining	Color	Message
More than 7 days	Green	"X days left in your free trial"
3 to 7 days	Yellow	"X days left in your free trial — upgrade to keep recovering revenue"
Less than 3 days	Red	"X days left — your trial expires soon. Upgrade now to avoid interruption"

The banner includes a direct link to the billing page for one-click upgrade. On the final day, the banner becomes fixed (non-dismissible) with a countdown to the exact expiry time.

When your trial expires, all active recovery operations stop immediately. Retries are paused, dunning emails are halted, and SMS messages are blocked. Upgrade before expiry to avoid interruption. See Trial Policy for details.

Webhook Health Indicator

The dashboard header includes a real-time webhook health indicator that shows the status of your inbound webhook connection. The indicator uses a traffic-light system based on the timestamp of the last received event:

Status	Condition	Indicator
Healthy	Last event received within the past 15 minutes	Green dot
Warning	Last event received 15 minutes to 6 hours ago	Yellow dot
Unhealthy	No events received in over 6 hours, or no events ever received	Red dot

Clicking the indicator opens a detail panel showing:

Timestamp of the last received webhook event
Total events received in the past 24 hours
Event type breakdown (payment failures, updates, etc.)
A link to the webhook configuration page

Why It Matters

A degraded webhook connection means LostChurn is not receiving payment failure events, which means failed payments are not being recovered. The health indicator gives you immediate visibility into connection issues without needing to check logs.

Recovery Configuration Simulation

Before going live, you can preview how different recovery settings would perform against your actual payment failure patterns. The configuration simulation tool is available at Settings > Recovery > Simulate.

How It Works

Select a date range to analyze (the simulation uses your historical payment failure data).
Adjust recovery parameters:
- Max retry attempts — how many times to retry a failed payment
- Retry timing — delay between attempts (e.g., 4h, 24h, 48h, 72h)
- Decline code routing — which decline categories to retry vs. skip
- Dunning channels — email only, email + SMS, etc.
Click Run Simulation.
The tool displays projected outcomes comparing your current settings against the recommended configuration:

Metric	Current Settings	Recommended Settings
Projected recovery rate	38%	54%
Estimated monthly recovered revenue	$12,400	$17,600
Average time to recovery	4.2 days	2.8 days
Customer communication touches	2.1 avg	3.4 avg

Simulation results are projections based on historical patterns and LostChurn's recovery model. Actual results may vary based on customer behavior, card issuer policies, and payment processor routing.

Team Invite Step

The onboarding checklist includes a team invite step where you can add colleagues to your LostChurn workspace. Team members receive an email invitation with a link to join.

Roles

Role	Permissions
Owner	Full access including billing, API keys, and team management
Admin	Full access except billing and ownership transfer
Member	View dashboard, analytics, and campaigns. Cannot modify settings
Viewer	Read-only access to dashboard and analytics

You can skip this step during onboarding and invite team members later from Settings > Team.

Sandbox-to-Paid Conversion Flow

If you started with Sandbox Mode, LostChurn provides a guided path to convert to a paid account:

Exit sandbox — click "Exit Demo" in the sandbox banner or navigate to Settings > Account.
Connect a real PSP — the onboarding checklist appears with your first step pre-selected.
Verify webhook delivery — LostChurn confirms events are arriving from your live PSP.
Choose a plan — select a billing plan and pricing model (fixed rate or performance pricing).
Go live — recovery begins automatically once webhooks are verified and a plan is active.

Your sandbox exploration history (pages visited, features tried) is preserved for analytics purposes but does not carry over as production data. Your live account starts fresh with real payment data from your PSP.

Conversion Prompt

After spending significant time in sandbox mode (typically 3+ sessions or 30+ minutes total), a non-intrusive prompt appears suggesting you connect a real payment processor:

"You've explored LostChurn's recovery pipeline in demo mode. Ready to start recovering real revenue? Connect your payment processor to go live."

This prompt can be dismissed and will not appear again for 7 days.

Resuming Onboarding

If you leave onboarding partway through, LostChurn saves your progress. When you return, the checklist picks up exactly where you left off. Incomplete steps are highlighted, and completed steps show a checkmark.

The onboarding checklist remains visible in the dashboard sidebar until all required steps are completed. After completion, it collapses into a "Setup Complete" badge that links to a summary of your configuration.

Next Steps

Quick Setup -- connect your first PSP in 5 minutes
Sandbox Mode -- explore with sample data before going live
Plans & Pricing -- compare plans and choose a pricing model
Trial Policy -- understand trial terms and anti-abuse protections

Onboarding Features